Catherine Connolly (Galway West, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the opportunity to contribute to the debate, even in my short three minutes. I also thank Fianna Fáil, although I share the deep cynicism in the room about its commitment to see the actual changes through. I also welcome the amendments from the real Opposition, which go to the heart of a debate on pensions that needs to be had in this Dáil in due course. I also wish to acknowledge the tremendous work done by Age Action, the National Women's Council, the Irish Human Rights and Equality Commission and the ICA.

It is also worth highlighting that the Department, and presumably the Minister and the Government, had full prior knowledge of the unequal impact of these changes on women and, more particularly, of an analysis of a comprehensive sample of PRSI contributions carried out by the Department at the time, details of which were released under a freedom of information request, which highlighted and indicated that gender disparity, and it was quite clear. More specifically, the documents show that the impact on the lower categories, where there were mostly women, was flagged by officials in October 2011. That the Government of the day and this Government would persist in first introducing and then leaving in place a pension that is totally discriminatory beggars belief, even more so given the very recent budget speech by the Minister in which he said, quite unbelievably, "I am also pleased to say that work on equality and in gender proofing of the budget continues".

The changes introduced by Deputy Burton at the time were and remain particularly egregious given that they widened an already unequal pension gap. We know that women retire on at least 30% less pension, and that is on top of a pay gap prior to that. We also know there is a need for a wider debate on the other issues that have been raised, particularly the absurd situation whereby 65 year olds are forced to retire and then have to suffer the indignity of going down and saying they are available for work and filling out a form confirming they are available for work. The Government, with this policy, is asking people to lie. There is a solution to this problem. It is a very specific solution to deal with a very finite number of people. I have absolutely no hesitation in supporting the motion.

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